The thorough good cook

51. Richelieu. Chop up very tine six ounces or so of mushrooms lightly fried in butter, and one or two truffles peeled. Put into a saucepan two small spoonfuls of smooth sauce (No. 63) ; reduce it slightly, then take it off the fire and mix in the mushrooms and the truffles; add three yolks of eggs, and boil the sauce for some two or three minutes, stirring it all the time. It is best to make this sauce in a shallow saucepan and to pour it afterwards into a smaller one. Just before serving mix in a piece of butter, but do not let it boil again. This sauce should be thick ; but if it be too thick, thin it with the juice of mushrooms or with broth. 52. Robert. This is one of the most ancient of sauces, and also one of the most appetising, only you must clear your head of the nonsensical notion that a cuisine into which onions enter must be of necessity a vulgar one. Indeed, the whole Temple of Cookery, as far as flavouring is concerned, may be said to rest on four pillars — the onion and its congeners, the lemon, the anchovy, and the faggot of sweet herbs. The dome of the edifice is the spice-box, and it is flanked on each side by smaller cupolas, the salt-box and the pepper-box. Now for Sauce Robert. Peel and cut up four middling-sized onions into very small cubes, which place in a stew-pan with two ounces of butter ; stir over a moderate fire till slightly brown, then add a tablespoonful and a half of malt vinegar, and let it boil; add half a pint of brown sauce (No. 14) with half a pint of consomme (p. 77); simmer beside the fire for ten minutes ; skim well ; stir over a brisk fire, reduce until it is as thick as the apple-sauce usually served with pork ; finish with two tablespoonfuls of made mustard and a little sugar and salt, if Mrs. Cook thinks them requisite. Some prefer French mustard ; but when Sauce Robert goes with pork, I prefer the English. In the South of France, Sauce Robert is made in the Provengal fashion — two tablespoonfuls of salad oil are used instead of the two ounces of butter, and the finishing touch is given with a piece of scraped garlic the size of a pea. I merely cite the dish, as there are a multitude of English ladies who abhor the very idea of what Charles Lamb calls " the rank and guilty garlic " — although they eat a great deal more of it than they wot of Avhen they dine at French restaurants. 53. Romaine. Cut a pound of veal and half a pound of ham into dice, and put them into a saucepan with two legs of fowl, three or four carrots, four onions, two bay-leaves, three cloves, a little basil, half a pound of butter, and some salt ; set these on a rather brisk fire. In the meanwhile, pound the yolks of twelve hard-boiled eggs to a paste, which put to the above and stir them in till the butter is entirely melted ; then pour in, by degrees, a quart of cream. Set the saucepan again on the fire for half an hour, stirring all the time ; if it be too thick, add more cream or milk. "When sufficiently done, strain it through a tammy. 54. Salmi.